Human mind creates intellectual property

Intellectual property is born of the human intellect – in other words, the human mind creates intellectual property. Ideas, thoughts, concepts that people come up with are their intellectual property and remain so till such time as they become public knowledge by being shared with others. Government laws exist in all countries to protect and safeguard the intellectual property of individuals and organizations since it has commercial value. Laws prohibit imitation, infringement and dilution. Intellectual property includes brand names, discoveries, formulas, inventions, designs, software, artistic/literary/musical works etc.

Intellectual property laws

Intellectual property remains protected only as long as it is not disclosed to others. Once others become aware of it, there is a tendency to “steal” the idea and claim that it is their idea. In order to bypass intellectual property laws they modify the original idea just a bit so as not to be identical and then they take credit for the concept/idea. Because of this practice, many inventors, innovators, creative people etc lose their ideas to others who had made no contribution at all. In such cases, even though rules and laws are supposed to protect the original idea, they cannot do so. So intellectual property no longer remains the originator’s baby.

Just as it is difficult to think of original, unique concepts and ideas, it is also difficult to execute these ideas. But the ideas remain an abstract concept till such time as they are not executed. When people take action with respect to the ideas and create something – tangible or tangible – from them, the ideas get life, they get an identity. This creation or execution is what is owned by the creator and it becomes intellectual property.

Will just remain as ideas

In order to make their ideas a success, the creators have to execute them. Otherwise they will just remain as ideas is someone’s back drawer. Execution requires and is dependent on a large number of factors. Organizational support, an efficient, motivated and dedicated team, beneficial personnel policies, favorable government laws all contribute to the success of idea execution. To take an idea to final execution means a series of inter-connected tasks that move forward via a disciplined process. These steps are not that easy to copy. So when an idea is executed via a specific difficult-to-imitate process, it becomes an intellectual property that belongs solely to the creator .